PORT ST. LUCIE — Dillon Gee begged for one more inning, but wasn’t about to get his wish.

This was the right-hander’s final start of the 2013 season, last Sept. 26 against the Brewers at Citi Field. The Mets still were trying to win every game to make the season’s final carnage a little more respectable, and Gee was lifted after six innings. It left him at 199 innings for the season and angry at himself for not reaching the 200 plateau.

“I look back and say it’s my fault,” Gee said Wednesday at the Mets spring training complex. “If I pitch better in April and May, then I easily have over 200, so you just have to go back to if I do my job, I get there.”

Gee went 12-11 with a 3.62 ERA for the Mets last season — solid numbers for a pitcher who missed the second half of 2012 recovering from surgery to repair an artery in his right shoulder after a blood clot was detected —but was left wondering how much better his year could have been without a slow start.

Beginning with a dominant performance against the Yankees last May 30 in The Bronx, Gee was 10-5 with a 2.71 ERA, helping rescue a rotation besieged by injuries, starting with the re-torn anterior capsule that forced Johan Santana to undergo season-ending surgery on his left shoulder during spring training.

When Gee went home to Arlington, Texas after last season, the goal was to ensure he would report to this camp ready to resume where he ended in September. He understands there can’t be a repeat of last April and May, when he pitched to a 6.34 ERA and was nearly bounced from the Mets’ rotation.

“I kind of worked out all offseason, but I toned it back a notch,” Gee said. “I didn’t lift as heavy and thought maybe if I arrived kind of in the shape I was in at the end of the season we could do that all year long.”

Manager Terry Collins has Gee included in a rotation that with Bartolo Colon, Zack Wheeler and Jon Niese — with the fifth spot up for grabs.

Collins didn’t view Gee’s surge last season as a mirage.

“I think we’re going to see a very successful Dillon Gee, because he now knows exactly what he’s got to do,” Collins said. “He’s got to get himself ready. He knows how to pitch. He knows how to get people out, so I think part of our whole spring training is to make sure we get him game ready April 1 as if it’s May 15.”

But the 27-year-old Gee also isn’t about to set the bar too high, regardless of his strong performance over the final four months of 2013.

“Do I think I’m a 2.70 ERA guy? I would like to think so, but I definitely think I’m a low 3s guy,” Gee said.

Gee also said he would like to eliminate any stress about reaching the 200-innings plateau by pushing his count to 215 or 220 this season.

Gee, a 21st-round draft pick by the Mets in 2007, doesn’t have Matt Harvey’s or Wheeler’s fastball — or either pitcher’s pedigree (Harvey and Wheeler were first-round selections), but said the underdog role suits him fine.

“I was a first-rounder — after 20 of them,” Gee said. “I don’t need that stuff. I fly under the radar, and it fuels me, really. I like to exceed expectations and surprise people.”